automatically the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour fracking poisons our water and causes earthquakes the fracking industry is still booming in

america our local communities across america try to change that and protect american lives at the same time advertised daily take corporations are just buying our commons of the straw in our democracy are harming our health to how do we stop the greatest health risk to humanity today. in screwed news it's the boom time for fractures in the united states while our nation may be slipping when it comes to education innovation infrastructure investment health care and so on there's one area where we're not falling behind the rest of the world and that's fracking in just the last few decades the united states has become the world's leader in fracking fracking is a natural gas drilling technique that involves shooting millions of gallons of water and toxic chemicals deep underground to break up in those released natural gas to pa. since most of the fracking wells here are located in states like ohio

west virginia and pennsylvania despite study after study showing that fracking leads to health risks it's currently not regulated by the environmental protection agency thanks to a loophole put into place by then vice president dick cheney but now several organizations are joining together to petition the e.p.a. to close this loophole in a letter to the environmental integrity project rights groups who argue that the loophole for the oil and gas extraction industries makes no sense given the huge amounts of toxic chemicals involved that have only increased with the rapid rise of fracking since oil and gas facilities are currently not required to report such data the full scope of environmental and public health risks to citizens and communities is not. the toxics related risks include air pollution drinking water contamination and discharges to rivers and streams knowing the dangers communities across america are fighting back against the fractures one community in particular

is in more a county new mexico joining me now to tell their story is kathleen dudley chair and board member of the new mexico coalition for community rights kathleen welcome well thank you tom my pleasure tell us about counties fight against big oil well we began five years ago when the land then came in to lease minerals and we've been fighting ever since we started to educational forms we we did our baseline water well testing. prior to drilling we've tried to bring about the education to every single household member and as a result of that we've actually ended up having two elections both in two thousand and ten and two thousand and twelve to bring in two commissioners who are in support of community rights ordinance that will ban fracking and not let industry into our communities so we have been organizing big time it sounds like it.

expecting problems with the courts well we haven't cast that in more county yet but what we have seen since we began working with thomas lindsay through the and others at the community environmental legal defense fund cel t.f. out of pennsylvania to help us organize what we have found is that as a result of our educational efforts with their democracy schools our neighboring county san miguel county passed the very ordinance that we are trying to and working to get into law in morgan county they got theirs passed in the city of las vegas new mexico which bans fracking and that occurred april second of two thousand and twelve so we're expect that it could about that yeah it is this is extraordinary what what role do local elections planned. well the role that elections play is that if we don't have counselors or commissioners who are pro this citizens' pro the voice of the people and then they're going to be the

voice of the industry and state government which promotes you know on the fracking that promotes the drilling because they're interested in bringing money in in spite of the water depletion the water pollution that they gradation to the culture you know so it's it's critical ok. kathleen thanks so much for being with us tonight thank you very much the very best and let me just note the town lindsay's town is one of these community environmental legal defense fund is c e l d s dot org if you want to check that out of the internet thanks kathleen thank you now for more on this i want to turn over to mari marvell the associate director of the community environmental legal defense fund which i just plug we welcome. thanks tom how is more a county a model for other communities to push back against fracking. we've seen communities across the country including in moore and san miguel county that are coming together organizing themselves educating themselves to recognize that they should

have the right to make these kinds of decisions in their communities and so we saw the city of pittsburgh which we worked with several years ago in two thousand and ten was the first local band in the nation to ban fracking within the community as a community bill of rights and we're seeing communities across the country saying we will not accept fracking here i'm beginning to organize themselves different to assert their rights to decide what happens in their communities the gas companies though would say we've got a contract here that says the this guy's going to let us do it every way we want under his landon and we paid him and we got the rig here and we had all the toxic chemicals ready to pump in. you guys don't have a right to stop us. well communities across the country including in new mexico working with kathleen and her organization are coming to the conclusion that so long as corporations have a structure of law and governance which protects them a and allows them to come in

and to our communities the communities will never be able to protect themselves will never be able to achieve sustainability or sustainable energy and so this work is very much about asserting a community has rights over the rights of corporations and over the rights of a structure of governance which says that they have to have beef forced to be fracking and that they must accept these toxic chemicals and they must accept the earthquakes and other impacts that come with fracking communities are saying no more and they're not willing to accept that structure of governance and so they're actually beginning to move forward new structures of laws through these bills of rights ordinance like we saw in las vegas new mexico this year saying we're going to assert our right to decide not corporations what do you think the chances are that we might be able to to to have the e.p.a. actually regulate fracking i mean dick cheney kind of snuck that thing through in the in the dark of night and the you know he of halliburton fame and halliburton was the leader in the whole fracking thing they don't let this happen in europe are they they have they got it but this is you know this is

a toxic waste disposal site basically but to produce as natural gas is a byproduct. you know we're seeing we're actually receiving phone calls from south africa from australia as well as other parts of the united states where people in communities are facing fracking and they're coming to the recognition and the understanding that if we regulate inactivity it's take place like fracking that means we're actually allowing it to come in our communities are saying we understand that fracking is just fundamentally dangerous impacts to our environment and our health and we're simply not going to accept it and so they're understanding that we're trying to regulate something better or even if the e.p.a. were to regulate fracking it still means fracking is coming into our communities and communities are saying we understand that we are not going to allow it here and so we're not going to try to regulate. ourselves we're not going to try to frack ourselves into a better place because i understand fracking alone cannot and it's like other communities across the country which have said we recognize that regulating the privatisation of our water regulating factory farming is allowing those kinds of

very harmful activities to come in they want to ban them altogether and are putting in place new structures of want to do so right and to what extent does this come down to money and politics. money in politics plays a huge role of this of course and it's not just money in politics it's not just that our candidates are receiving so much corporate dollars it's that we have a structure of long governance in place which is all about expanding wealth and power for a very elite concentrated few such that we see things like fracking coming in because our structure along governance is about allowing fracking to take place allowing factory farming to take place our environmental laws allow mountaintops to topps to be blown off of people in our communities are coming to a place where they're saying we recognize we cannot have local democracy local self governance or sustainability so long as we continue to regulate these kinds of very negative nasty activities right so basically saying you know regulation in a way that certifies it is is authorized we're just saying you know yes eliza's it

to me and you are going to have to paraphrase to paraphrase nancy reagan just say no. it seems like a great strategy marmar goal and all the great folks like you can the community environmental legal defense fund and thomas lindsey are all doing some spectacular work thanks so much for being with us tonight thanks tom the talk. in the bowels of the roast the news we all know the bush administration committed war crimes when a tortured terrorist suspects but the only person going to jail for these crimes is the guy who blew. the whistle on all of it on tuesday former cia whistleblower john cura col pleaded guilty to revealing the identity of a cia agent when he turned over classified secrets to the new york times exposing the bush administration's torture program back in two thousand and seven kerik out

told the story of al qaeda operative abu zubaida who was captured in water boarded more than eighty times character was originally charged under the espionage act to which he pled not guilty now tuesday's decision to plead guilty to a lesser charge allows curacao to get out of prison within two and a half years still two and a half years whistleblower advocate just one radek with the government accountability project of tuesday's events the only person to be criminally prosecuted and now likely jailed as a result of the bush era torture regime is john kerry who refused to participate in torture helped expose the program and said on national television the torture was wrong. you might remember president obama said this in two thousand and nine about how it's time for the nation to look forward and not prosecute the primes of the past. obviously we're looking at past practices. and i don't believe that

anybody has both the law on the other hand i also have a belief that we need to look forward as los as opposed to looking looking backwards. at least when it comes to presidents and vice presidents john yoo and jay bybee unfortunately that same standard is not applied to whistleblowers and until we do actually hold bush and his team accountable for war crimes this gaping moral wound in america is not going to heal. you know what the number one health risk facing humanity is given it's not aids novel area it's not tuberculosis i'll tell you what it is it's a nice family tree. i

will write. that i also promised that i every single day. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of. and realized everything. you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about what. are you know what kind of terrorist cells they want to give us aid to featurism a liberal and the christian. can you believe. you know the pope are going to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that's. garbage he calls it breaking news i mean martin and we're going to break that.

word tonight is taking our country back segment we had to virginia's ninth congressional district by district has been in the hands of democrats for over three decades until republican congressman. won in two thousand and ten but now the democratic party has a great chance to reclaim the seat in congress joining me now is anthony. candidate for u.s. congressman from virginia ninth congressional district anthony welcome. thanks i'm so glad to be on your show tom thanks for joining us i have pressure name right absolutely perfect ok create what is the race look like right now between you and congressman griffin. well it's gotten tighter with each week and right now we're in the very winnable situation eventually i came from out of nowhere tom because this is my first run ever for politics when i entered the race just in march and we've

run a terrific grassroots campaign met thousands of folks and my basic message of building a bottom up economy that's much more sustainable for our communities and the country has really resonated so we close that gap we're within striking distance now though when we just need to get support down the last thirteen days or so and we can actually pull this off that's absolutely great and eighty four nine dot com is your website that's it w w about a for a night like anthony for the night a f o r and the number nine dot com that'll take folks right there right and what do you think are the most important issues facing the citizens of virginia's ninth congressional district. well it's really sort of first and foremost about building a strong economy with a diversity of jobs just like most of the rest of the country we hear that everywhere we go it's got a particular challenges in the coal fields but it's also true in other areas where folks of the pendant on tobacco and furniture and textiles in the past the approach

that i've been taking because i've been working on the ground for the last twenty seven years is really to work with farmers and law givers and miners and others to build these strong alternatives to build more diversity of businesses that meet community needs that preserve and protect and even restore the environment when we do that we actually get more job creation then when we give away tax breaks to companies that offshore we just keep given breaks to the super rich and so it's a it's a bottom up because honestly rather than a top down it's working it's just that we need to put our attention there and our investment there instead of a failed trickle down notions you know trickle down has over the last thirty years reagan's trickle down economics has has succeeded in creating a nation. but not much more it seems what any specific legislation that you would be in favor of or you would be pushing one of the issues that are closest to your heart. well for one thing i want to do a much better job of striking

a balance between you know protecting the environment on the one hand creating jobs and the other the republican party has managed to paint this as a zero sum gain that we have to choose between workers and their health and safety and protection including things like black long for miners and basic safety for other workers on the one hand versus jobs or protecting the environment versus jobs so that keep one is just getting beyond that using a sustainable development approach another very fundamental one not only for our district but the whole country is we've got to undo citizens united i'm going to be working with a lot of grassroots folks to try to pass a constitutional amendment but also to pass legislation that would promote small donor campaigns like mine or a small donor campaign we depend on people who give us ten and twenty five and one hundred dollars rather than my my opponent who has industries money cold executive money where their small donor campaign and you're in

a real disadvantage so we're going to work for legislation to to change that to make grassroots campaigns and petted sounds excellent anthony flocka vento thanks so much for being with us tonight and best of luck i'm absolutely and i hope your listeners will go to the website and support the campaign thank you for nine dot com thank you very much. it's the good the bad of a very very big deal asli oddly good australia gordon new reports australia's policies to curb climate change could spur on as much as one hundred three billion dollars in spending over the next four years much of this comes from occurred. tax that that country has established meanwhile here in the united states our politicians still refuse to acknowledge that climate change exists because these politicians are in the pockets of big oil and don't want to invest in anything but

oil should the prospects of adding billions of dollars in revenue to our economy be reason enough to embrace new clean energy policies washington family stood up for the environment and gave our economy a boost at the same time. the bad america county arizona there's something fishy going on in america county home to infamous sheriff joe arpaio at least two official documents that were mailed from the county's elections recorders office to spanish speaking residents contain faulty information both documents misinform spanish speaking voters saying that the election day was on november eighth and not on november sixth now the media's caught wind of the errors the office has corrected its website and list of the correct election date in both english and spanish which have to wonder if this is really an honest mistake or what seems likely to be another republican effort to suppress democratic leaning latino voters and the very very ugly roy moore more as

a disgraced former alabama state supreme court justice who was removed from that position back in two thousand and three but could soon be back on the court more was at a rally when he told attendees that god was punishing america from bracey and supporting ideas like marriage equality he told the crowd that satan himself has convinced americans to support marriage equality and that is why quote god has a controversy with the inhabitants of this land of this land and until we reject those evils we shall suffer accordingly and quote mr morris suggesting that americans are suffering because we are embracing twenty first century ideals like equality and diversity and that is very very ugly.

in the past diseases like tuberculosis and malaria have been number one health concerns around the world but not any more in today's world globalization is the number one health risk facing humanity a new study released this week by the blacksmith institute reveals for the first time ever the impact of industrial pollutants on communities across the planet it found that industrial waste dump sites containing lead mercury chromium pesticides and other toxic horrors poisoned more than one hundred twenty five million people in forty nine different low and middle income nations around the planet and the authors of the study say this is a very conservative estimate and likely even more people are second by this rampant industrial pollution in fact the report says that industrial pollution is now a bigger global health problem for the world than malaria and tuberculosis just look at what's happening in places like exam farai nigeria it's

a nation without children or very few children walking around or a state without children why because hundreds of children who work in gold mines are exposed to very very high levels of lead back in march of two thousand and ten the organization doctors without borders arrived on the scenes and far off and found that hundreds of children had died from lead poisoning and thousands more were diseased by mortality rates in some of these villages among children were as high as forty three percent this is a genocide carried out by transnational corporations that have no restraints on how they operate in what were once sovereign nations that's the consequence of globalism. plain and simple globalism is the empowering of transnational corporations and the neutering of sovereign governments to keep their population safe from these transnational corporate behemoths globalization tears down borders

across the planet giving corporations free rein to move around the world of set up shop where ever the governments are the weakest wherever there's the least amount of regulation and wherever the workers are so desperate that they're willing to work for practically nothing and since most transnational corporations are far wealthier than the nations themselves in the developing world it is moving in take over in slave local populations use local communities as garbage dumps it's really simple when you let corporations do whatever they want without regulation when you leave their drive for never ending profits unchecked then they invariably will stop at nothing to satisfy their greed if it means they'll save a few million bucks a year and they'll dump battery acid all over a playground if you let them they are profit making machines without compassion and as richard fuller the president of the blacksmith report warned it's only going to get worse he said life threatening pollution will likely increase as the

global economy exerts an ever increasing pressure on industry to meet growing demands the damage will be greatest in many low and middle income countries where industrial pollution prevention regulations and measures at not kept pace and it's not just the developing world being poisoned it's right here in the united states according to that same report there are as many as three hundred thousand toxic dump sites right here in the united states and that doesn't include the over four hundred thousand fracking wells around the united states industry funded scientists say that fracking is perfectly safe. however study after study shows it can be deadly just last week a study on fracking found that the closer residents lived of fracking wells the more they suffered from symptoms of throat irritation and sinus infections even

their pets suffered from the same ailments and some cases died water and air samples in areas near fracking wells were also found to contain high levels of chemicals associated with the fracking americans could have been protected from these dangers of industrial fracking but dick cheney when he was vice president being a loyal corporate globalist put exemption for the fracking industry in two thousand and four into the law that keeps the e.p.a. from regulating fracking under the safe drinking water act since then fracking has exploded and so to have diseases associated with fracking the republicans want this epidemic to continue as rick perry so eloquently recited the montra of the corporate globalists that america needs to be about where you need to be about freedom from overtaxation freedom over litigation freedom oh. regulation. that means freedom for chemical companies to dump pesticides in our backyards

freedom for fracking companies to inject toxins into our drinking water and freedom for oil companies to spew unlimited amounts of carbon into our air to accelerate global climate change these guys want the new zamfara nigeria to be in pennsylvania . the point of all this is the corporate globalism is killing us all without government regulations in place to keep we the people safe from industrial malfeasance and say hello to ever increasing cases of cancer. heart disease you name it this struggle is nothing new in fact it's as old as time it's a struggle between organized people or governments and organized money or transnational corporations we were a bell against transnational corporate power in the form of the british company back in seventy three leading to our national independence a few years later and today almost three hundred thirty years later we need another

revolution against these transnational corporate killers. and that's the way it is tonight on the big picture wednesday october twenty fourth two thousand and twelve and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active your.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images cobol has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are all day.